CRIMSON JADE
A David Grant story
George B. Mair
© George B. Mair 1971
George B. Mair has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 1971 by JARROLDS PUBLISHERS (LONDON) LTD.
This edition published in 2020 by Lume Books.
To
Katy Sadler-Eaton
and
Gary Brighton
with love
Table of Contents
Author’s Note
1 -‘Millionaires don’t even think about money’
2 - ‘A very pious city’
3 - ‘Who was David Grant?’
4 - ‘This room is as safe as a prison’
5 - ‘They would kill for the sake of my ghost’
6 - ‘It was really a sort of sick joke’
7 - ‘I’m buying you, Grant’
8 - ‘Don’t say things like that, David. They upset me’
9 - ‘Helena had beginner’s luck’
10 - ‘I always travel with one weapon which matters’
11 - ‘I’m just going to work up a tan’
Author’s Note
Background detail is accurate, and although family relationships may seem improbable, exactly similar mixed-up homes have been found by the author during his visits to South America, which is a sort of biological laboratory where any blend is possible—with any result!
The relationship between Petra and her husband is founded on fact. Stories of Amazonia are accurate and can easily be confirmed—even if some seem too dreadful to be true.
The Death Squad in Rio does exist, although it is, of course, officially denied. For those who may be interested, photographs of Indian killings similar to those discussed in this report can be studied from appropriate libraries.
1
‘Millionaires don’t even think about money’
Petra Brandt’s legs seemed to spring from her armpits and ended in low-cut shoes which showed the cleavages of her toes. She was a blend of Italian and Portuguese, Brazilian by birth and with a one-in-eight dilution of genes from Sierra Leone. She was said to be fluent in eight languages and the men who had briefed Grant believed that she was mistress to a seven-goal ‘royal’.
Grant, however, knew for certain that her other hobbies included cock-fighting, judo, Verdi opera and men. During their first meeting at a King’s Road party in London a friend had watched his rising interest and tried to cut it short. ‘Kinky and cruel,’ he had said. ‘A man-eater, David. Forget her.’ But Grant seldom accepted other people’s values and preferred to rely on his own judgement. By the end of the evening she had been filed in memory as: ‘Probably not worth the risk, but accessible to a few and dangerous to most. Review findings at next opportunity.’
Ten months passed, however, before their paths again crossed, and then a week shared in Mykonos with mutual friends proved that although she was still likely to be ‘dangerous to most and accessible to few’ she was almost certainly worth any risk, and it was only his own self-discipline, plus knowledge that the department was interested in her background, which had made him play it cool. The order had come from his chief, old Admiral Cooper, on the day he had flown to Athens.
‘You’ll meet a woman called Brandt,’ he had said curtly. ‘But don’t get involved. Our people are curious about some of her side-lines.’
That was a year earlier, yet they had also met during one of the early 747 flights on the following summer and the trip had ended by him rating her as ‘provocative, yet informed and intelligent plus plus’. He still accepted that she was dangerous and unpredictable, but he had long ago given up expecting normal behaviour from abnormal people, and indeed so-called ‘normal people’ bored him to tears. Petra Brandt, he guessed, might drive a man crazy, but at least he would never be bored.
He had also noted, and indeed he would have been blind if he hadn’t, that she never wore a bra under soft fabrics like cashmere or silk, and remembered that while in Mykonos, during a burst of meltemi[*] she had probably done a Butterfield 8, using a mid-calf chinchilla coat against the wind. She had also eaten spaghetti with her fingers, sucked an orange without worrying about lipstick and flaunted black nail varnish on her toes.
His visit to Buenos Aires had been ordered by a department which normally narrowed risk margin to near zero, but for once he had sensed a note of unpreparedness and felt that too much was being played by ear. In fact, his chief, Admiral John Silas Cooper, had said as much. ‘Got to admit, David, that you’ll be working rather blind, but something’s cooking out there and the woman might be your key.’
He was staying at the Lancaster Hotel and had sent a basket of Paradiso lilies mixed with carnations and fern to Petra on his second day. His card had been clipped to that of the Embassy Flower Shop, the snob store of its kind and chosen to prove that he knew the local ropes.
Having a week or two in Argentina collecting material for a book. Happy memories of London, Mykonos and the 747. David Grant.
An invitation to dinner followed by return and Mikel’s voice on the telephone had been friendly. He had also been one of the Mykonos party, but remembered Grant from an earlier reception in Paris. By extending the invitation in person he made two points: that he rated Grant as socially acceptable and second that he was being received as a family friend.
When he sat down to dinner the Brandts placed him at Petra’s table, which was a typically subtle Argentine compliment suggesting that he was rather more important to the husband than he was ever likely to be to the wife. But it also pin-pointed him as having been singled out for a place of honour and gave him status among twenty-seven other guests, each of whom belonged to that exclusive breed whose obituaries are kept up-to-date in most of the global dailies.
Grant had almost forgotten that B.A. is more cosmopolitan than Europeans realise, and that for at least a few hundred families there is the sort of wealth which has long been only a dream in Britain or France. Mikel Brandt was listed in the top-twenty income bracket of the Americas, but although a second-generation Argentine, he could use either the British passport to which his father’s nationality entitled him or else the German which he claimed through his mother. He spoke English with a Winchester-Balliol accent and German with the guttural precision of Heidelberg, but Italian for his private life and Spanish with the servants. In fact Grant remembered him once saying that every civilised man needed to be at least quadri-lingual: Italian for culture and gracious living, English for business and politics, German for quarrelling and French or Arabic for making love.
But Petra had a noli me tangere personality which might make even a man like Mikel walk carefully, and Grant wondered for a brief moment how often they spoke French together! The state of their marriage was anyone’s bet, though the department estimated that it had been a marriage of convenience. In fact one of several sixty-four-thousand-dollar questions bothering departmental backroom boys was what convenience? Or whose? And Grant suspected that for reasons which were no doubt valid they had kept many suspicions and a few facts to themselves.
Meanwhile she was playing hostess to perfection and it was sheer pleasure to watch the artistry with which she could keep everyone within range involved in a broad spectrum conversation laced with wise-cracks which still managed to be different from the standard trivia of Now-people back home.
Grant had taken stock of his fellow guests over drinks and figured that given enough good money-spinning reasons to unite them they could, in effect, within a few years mammally influence the thoughts and habits of most of the non-communist Latin American world. In fact they were too powerful by half, and it was fortunate that not this side of t
he grave would they ever be likely to unite in anything except dinner in a home where rivals could enjoy that almost sensual satisfaction of temporarily burying the hatchet.
Civilisation, as Grant well knew, was at best pretty thin, and in South America it could be thinner than average!
He glanced again around the dining room, content that the women beside him had become involved in high-speed exchanges with an oil tycoon and Director of the World Bank respectively. One wall was almost covered by a Gobelin tapestry which had once been owned by Cardinal Richelieu, while hand-painted classical scenes in the style of Benito Quinquela Martin had been signed by a mid-century prodigy from the Boca on two others. Three parallel tables, each late eighteenth-century English, were dressed with George III silver and nineteenth-century hard-paste Sèvres dinner services imprinted with the monogram of Louis Philippe.
Oysters had been flown up from Chile’s Strait of Magellan and a game bird shot in Bolivia for each guest. Rainbow trout caught that same morning had been rushed by air from Junin, while the steaks were a dream from the family estancia near Tandil.
Grant preferred simplicity with style to brash luxury, but the Brandts had taste and he mentally chalked up an alpha plus on all counts. Dinner was proving to be a new high even for a connoisseur, and he wondered if this was their standard norm.
He also wondered if the party was strictly routine or if there was a guest of honour.
A white-coated steward poured a Brandt claret from the family vineyard. It was one of the few which had rejected mass-produced methods of vini-culture and from which Mikel could still rely upon wines which compared with many labels in Europe.
A long row of Capo da Monte figures, replicas of San Martin and his generals, stared down upon the company from a narrow shelf at picture-rail level, and Grant appreciated that since the collection was both complete and undamaged it might realise six figures in American dollars at Sotheby’s.
The company had been divided into three groups of ten and Petra sat at table two with her husband at number one and her brother Cyp heading number three. Cyp was an ambassador waiting fresh posting, but with family estates in Brazil which had been founded during the rubber boom and were now appreciating through land-development projects calculated to launch him into the multi-dollar-millionaire rating.
Five house- and two wine-stewards served each table, while a major-domo with el Greco features hovered in the distance like some gaunt bird of prey with vulpine beak and deep brown eyes.
Grant suddenly realised that he was at a focal point, opposite Petra and at the other end of her table yet under the eyes of both Mikel and Cyp. He was intensely responsive to atmosphere and began to sense that the room ‘felt’ wrong. He was being virtually ignored by the women on either side, but Cyp’s attention seemed to cover him when he glanced towards guests on his right, while Mikel could mark him every time his eyes swung left. Most people were speaking English, a courtesy, he imagined, to himself and a North American television interrogator who was holding the attention of Cyp’s wife, an olive-complexioned woman in her later thirties. Her fingers flashed too many rings and diamonds for Grant’s taste, though being the daughter of a trans-world hotel chain she could afford them, and in any case it was a normal enough show for wealthy women in Latin America.
Fragments of conversation flicked around him like bullets ricocheting from walls or ceiling, and a few may have contributed to the air of tension which he sensed had begun to build up while some were chips from what must have been good stories.
‘Conrad’ll never forgive young Nicky for losing out with Liz, ’specially now she’s become more or less a living goddess.’
‘Question is simple enough. Will Bolivia become another Cuba?’
‘Correct, ma’am. They struck oil on my place near Comodoro Rivadavia and now my daughter wants a tiara to celebrate. She says it looks good on gala night at the Colon.’
‘I wish Charles would come out here some time. Such a nice young man! But so serious, don’t you think?’
‘One day some public-spirited citizen’s going to take another shot at Papa Doc. In fact the seventies should see a lot more islands go up in smoke.’
‘Okay. Drinks during the second interval and I’ll introduce you, but although she’s singing at the Caminito don’t let that fool you. She can cost a bomb.’
‘Remember how they rigged up a screen in the large dressing room first time Philip visited Hurlingham? Well, he wouldn’t use it and asked some top brass if they’d never seen a bare bottom before!’
Grant smiled inwardly. That story had grown whiskers, and although it probably wasn’t even founded on fact had already passed into folk anecdote, maybe because it wore an authentic ring.
‘Things are so complicated in every country that the only solution might be a good going thirty-minute nuclear war. Could solve a lot of problems.’
‘That sputchink thing scares me, Professor. Somebody may opt for prevention being better than cure. Though I must say I’d rather see Peking or Hanoi radioactive than Miami or Rio … Or B.A. for that part.’
‘Dr. Grant!’
The voice at his side snapped him back to attention. ‘Pardon. I was day-dreaming.’
The woman was a President’s wife making an unofficial shopping visit to the Argentine, but even when protocol had been more or less dropped she still wasn’t accustomed to being ignored. ‘Are all Englishmen so gauche? Two interesting women beside you yet you brood like a yogi! Or is it yoga? Helena Mauriac must be wondering what she’s done to annoy.’
Everyone knew that Mauriac had flown out for the gala opening of Teatro Colon and that she was sponsored by Petra who told the world that she was the best since Callas in the mid-sixties. ‘I just take things quietly and enjoy life in slow tempo.’
‘Like hell you do, David Grant.’ Petra’s voice rippled down the table and catapulted him into centre-stage. ‘You’re as quiet as a black mamba and about twice as fast. So why hide your talents?’
Helena Mauriac’s pouting lips broadened into a huge smile. ‘Don’t tease him. He’s probably tired. Flying out with that time difference is a drag. And anyhow, I don’t see him as a mamba. Though I would like to cast him as Scarpia.’
‘Tell me,’ said Grant softly, ‘are personal remarks like this normal in Argentina, or have you decided to make a human sacrifice of me just for kicks?’
The President’s wife interrupted and her voice seemed taut with an edge of anxiety. ‘Get your own back, David Grant. To our hostess you are a mamba. What is she to you?’
Petra and Grant’s eyes locked along the length of the board for a slow five seconds and one part of Grant’s mind registered that conversation had been cut off at source all over the room. He could almost feel a rising wave of interest vibrating towards him while the major-domo paused in his step and seemed frozen into a pose of pricked expectation. He decided to tease. ‘She reminds me of a woman I met in Beirut. Before drinks she was beautiful: but really beautiful. Then after one pink gin she became interesting, while after two she became desirable and after the third she was a challenge.’ He sipped his claret and Petra’s eyes hardened with suspicion. ‘But shortly after the fourth she became a conquest!’
Helena Mauriac smiled with appreciation. ‘That’s the sort of thing a Frenchman might say. Or Scarpia before fixing the firing squad!’
The President’s wife struggled to keep the atmosphere light. ‘Scotch is the drink out here. Pink gin reminds everyone of neo-colonialism. How do you react to Johnny Walker?’
Grant guessed that both Cyp and Mikel were still listening. ‘Scotch is the drink of peasants in Scotland and millionaires in Latin America.’
‘And are you a peasant?’
‘A millionaire. But in cruzeiros.’
Petra laughed, but her expression reminded Grant of an evening in Mykonos when she had lost heavily at poker dice. It was his own bet that the Brazilian cruzeiro, repeatedly devalued, had cost her a lot more than the evening in
Mykonos and that she was sensitive about it. ‘Millionaires don’t even think about money.’
Grant shook his head. ‘Men become millionaires either because they inherit the stuff or else because they think about it all the time. Though ladies, of course, have options and can marry into it, while a few lucky ones can marry and inherit almost in the same breath.’
Grant heard Mikel laugh with appreciation since that was more or less what his own wife had done, but Petra wasn’t amused. ‘What brings you out here, David? Someone said that it was to write a book.’
‘Under a pseudonym.’
‘So we’ll all be in it?’
‘Possibly,’ said Grant. ‘I need three days in B.A. On the first I see the President and a few ministers. On the second I see top people like yourselves and on the third I do the tourist sights. Then I write about Buenos Aires before starting on Mendoza.’
‘And will it make a fortune?’
‘Probably not. But my father broke the bank at Monte Carlo and my mother won a football pool. I inherited and eventually bought Poseidon at eight shillings then sold at a hundred sterling. Though incidentally, ma’am, speaking of Scotch, someone has put a double into the claret or something.’
Mauriac wrinkled her nostrils. ‘What a horrible idea, but I’ll buy it, David Grant. What does a double Scotch do for you?’
‘A single,’ said Grant owlishly, ‘makes me want to be a sterling millionaire and a double makes me feel that I really am one.’
‘There are lots of ways of making a million,’ said Petra. ‘Maybe we can talk about them one day.’
The President’s petite and beautiful wife lowered her voice as conversation again became general. ‘You’ve made a hit, David Grant. When Petra sparks like that it means she’s got her sights raised.’
Crimson Jade Page 1
